Afterbirth (12 page)

Reid pulled open the door to the only cell with a padlock on it. He’d soldered a hasp to the metal frame for whomever, or whatever he might have to lock up. The widespread loss of power rendered the electronic locks useless.

“Get in there.” He shoved Penny through the door and set the lantern on the floor.

“Please, don’t hurt me.” Tears streamed down her face and tiny, red sores dotted the skin around her mouth, a local reaction to the Chloroform.

Reid took a blue and white cotton gown from the top drawer of a supply cart in the corner. “Here, put this on.” He threw it at her and it landed on the floor at her feet.

She cried harder and crossed her arms over her chest. “I…”

Reid slammed his palm against the bed. “I can’t take anymore crying. Put the goddamn gown on and get up there.”

Penny shook her head, refusing.

The dull headache, which had only just subsided, returned full-force, and his body tensed from the stress. “I’m not going to ask again.” He lifted her onto the bed, forced her wrists over her head, and fastened the first restraint.

“No, please.” She resisted, but he easily overpowered her. He climbed on top of her and pinned her with his weight. “What are you doing? Please, stop. Please.”

He tightened the cuffs on both of her wrists and leaned in so his mouth nearly touched hers. Her eyes went wide as he slid down her body, pressing his broad chest to her breasts. He hadn’t realized how much he missed a female connection. He parted her legs and yanked her toward him until her arms were fully outstretched.

“No!”

“No, what?” Reid became hard and he pressed himself against her so she could feel it. It had been so long that he ached. “I had no idea it was you in that house. Small world, Penny. You’ve really thinned out.” He licked his lips and slipped off her left sock, just to watch her squirm. He fastened her ankles, one after the other, and took a long look. The sight of her spread-eagle, crying, and restrained nearly drove him over the edge.

“Please, I’m…” She drew her lips into a tight almost invisible line, stopping before she finished what could be a critical sentence.

He raised one eyebrow. “You’re
what
?” Curiosity got the better of him. He slipped off her right sock and put the knife in her pant leg, sharp side facing up. He held the cuff of her jeans taut until the blade cut through the seams and ran the knife up the length of them. First one side fell away, and then the other. He pulled the pants out from under her and threw them on the floor.

“Stop, please.” Snot ran from her nose as she cried.

He cut away the oversized sweatshirt and she shivered, her body erupting in gooseflesh. Her delicate pink and white full-coverage bra and panties looked like they belonged on a much younger girl; a teen, perhaps, not yet comfortable in her womanly body. He traced a finger up her thigh and she fought to close her legs. Her high-pitched wails bordered on hysteria, and as he cut the right side of her underwear, she became even more frantic.

It was almost too good to be true.

She was a virgin.

“This will only hurt for a minute.”

He fashioned a gag out of gauze to stop her screaming. It wasn’t sex he was after.

She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed.

Reid laughed, looking for the perfect site to take what he needed. He pressed the knife’s tip to Penny’s thigh and cut away a dart of stretch-marked flesh. Blood dripped from his blade onto the dirty, white linoleum. Penny’s eyes flung open, her expression switching from absolute terror to terrible pain.

Reid held a fresh wad of gauze to the wound and rummaged, one-handed, for a suture kit.

“Not quite a pound of flesh,” he said, preparing to close the wound. “But it’s a start.”

Zach Keller stood at the base of the Van Hoevenberg Trail, preparing to scale Mount Marcy and praying to find his ailing wife, Allison, alive at the other end of it. The photographs he had found at the center of the cabin near the summit were his only leads to where Nixon might be keeping her.

A broken-down Saab with flat tires and the telltale rust of a car that hadn’t moved in a very long time sat alone in the parking lot outside the High Peaks Information Center. Zach noted the license plate and checked the trail register to see who it had belonged to. A family of five had signed in on March 21st, but had never signed out.

He took a small hatchet from his backpack and double-checked the hunting knife sheathed to his leg. The marksman in him preferred to use a pistol, but he’d become adept at close combat over the past several months, doing everything he could to avoid noise. He bent down next to the Saab and wiped the dirt from the side-view mirror. The sun glinted off his scalp, visible through the thin covering of near-shaved, blond hair. He pulled on a black knit hat and withdrew a small compact of face paint from the pack’s side pocket. He smeared a brown base coat over his face, neck, and ears and applied vertical black and green lines to break up his features. The cover would be enough to at least hide him from anything human that might be looking. He moved carefully, but quickly along the well-worn hiker’s path and veered left of it as soon as he found a suitable entrance to the wooded area.

The tree trunks were dense and the boughs spread wide, decorated in scant, red, yellow, and orange leaves that he wished were lush and green. The thinning canopy and crunching of dry leaves underfoot made travelling silently almost impossible.

The thick, waterproof paint felt like an itchy second skin. He lifted the folded edge of the knit cap to allow the breeze to dry his sweaty brow before pressing on.

A mile passed, maybe two, over terrain that inclined steadily, but never became steep. He remained vigilant for infected and surveyed the land for shelter in case of a storm. Off to the right, he caught sight of a faded trail marker visible through the trees that read, “Marcy Dam.” He cut across the patchy hiker’s trail, which was overgrown with weeds and found fast moving water, a sign that it was likely safe to drink. He took a sandwich bag from his pocket and dipped it deep below the water’s surface. There were no visible contaminants and he took a long, refreshing drink before continuing on a trail that veered to the right. The rockier terrain made it difficult to keep his balance and he moved slower through the next bit, mindful not to sprain his ankle. The top of his steel-toe boot pressed against a thick wrinkle of cotton and threatened to rub his leg raw. He stopped and adjusted his pant leg.

A branch snapped in the distance.

Instinct told him to call out, but common sense stopped him. If it was an infected, it wouldn’t answer. If it was human, he didn’t want it to. He hid behind a tree and looked in the noise’s direction. A red-breasted robin pecked at something syrupy beneath a patch of exposed soil. A squirrel scurried up a nearby tree and leapt to the next and another after that. The sound of distant, faster moving water held his attention, and for a brief moment, muted everything else. Another branch broke and fell through the thinning trees. It crashed to the ground and sent the bird flying. The flapping wings made him shudder.

“It’s just a squirrel,” he said and walked in the bird’s former direction.

The familiar smell hit him just as he made it to the cleared space. Something caught his ankle and stopped him in his tracks.

A decaying hand wrapped its rotting fingers around his boot. He kicked to pull free and something tried to grab his other foot. An infected man, buried just beneath the dirt, struggled to bring him down. A ridge of horseshoe-shaped hair stuck out from the ground in tufts. His right eye had been burned, lid and all. The bird had pecked through the charred remains of the hollow orb and was eating what was left of the eye beneath the black crust.

“Get off of me.” Zach chopped at the infected man’s bandaged wrist with his hatchet and separated his hand from his body. A piece of blue fabric clung to the stump.

Zach stumbled backward, careful not to trip. Steel chains and spikes held the infected man in place, like some kind of zombie landmine. The man moaned, waving his severed arm and biting at the air. Zach kicked aside the top layer of dirt, exposing the familiar, blue intern’s lab coat. A faded badge secured to the collar with a rusting silver clip showed the face of a thirty-something, prematurely balding man. A pit formed in Zach’s stomach. The nametag read Ben Gardner, but he hadn’t doubted the man’s identity.  He remembered their first meeting in the Nixon Center lab clearly. Finding him, or what was left of him, meant he was on the right path. Something had changed drastically for Nixon to allow this to happen to his most valued scientist. Zach straddled Ben’s decomposing body, careful not to get bit. He dried his palms on his pants and breathed through his mouth as he lifted his hatchet over his head and thrust it down with all of his strength between Ben’s eyes. The crack of splitting bone sent two squirrels bounding through the treetops and dead leaves rained down on him. A black blob rose from the gaping wound and Ben’s flailing arms went still. Zach stepped away, wiped his blade on the mossy ground, and tried to make sense of the change in Nixon’s regime.

Foster startled awake and yanked the buds from his ears. It took him a minute to remember where he was. The living room smelled of burnt wood. The fire died out and the room had grown cold. A yellow glow seeped around the edges of the plywood covering the windows, and he realized he’d somehow managed to sleep, safely, until morning.

He set the mp3 player aside, the battery now dead, and stretched.

“Penny?”

The silence made his voice seem loud. He raked his fingers through his tangled hair and repositioned his glasses, which had never sat right. His stiff neck ached from sleeping with his head on a thick, decorative pillow. He twisted and a series of pops in his spine released the tension in his back.

“Penny, you up?”

His socks were soaked with sweat from sleeping in the heavy, leather boots that didn’t breathe and that he didn’t take off for fear he’d unexpectedly have to run. He shook off the morning lethargy and picked the sleep from the corners of his eyes.

“Penny?”

He stuck his head inside the empty study where she’d sat going through the Halstead’s mementos. Volumes of photo albums stacked high on the desk. A knitted blanket pooled beside the office chair. The pair of emergency candles had burnt down to the nubs and white wax spilled from the candleholders onto the desk.

“Penny, hello?”

Nothing in the kitchen had been moved since the previous night’s meal. The half-eaten can of potted meat sat on the table sealed in a plastic bag next to the plate of crackers, which hadn’t been touched.

A terrible feeling set in. He checked the front door and found both the lock and the deadbolt secured, as well as the three boards, which had been screwed into place for good measure. If she left him, it wasn’t out that way.

He went upstairs to check the bedrooms, wondering if somehow she was still asleep. The house was only so big.

“Penny?”

A cold breeze ruffled the thick master bedroom curtains. The comforter on the bed had been dragged nearly to the floor, as if in a struggle, and his pistol nested in the folds.

“Shit.”

He ran to the window and looked outside. There was no sign of Penny and his Jeep hadn’t moved. The wind died down and a sickening, sweet smell crept up his nostrils. He whiffed the air and pushed aside one of the floor-length drapes. A white, cotton rag with the words “Nixon Center” stamped in blue ink covered a container. He picked up the rag and found a bottle of chloroform.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

No matter how hard he tried to get away, everything came back to that place. He checked the pistol’s ammo and not a single bullet missing. Whatever happened to Penny must have caught her off-guard.

At least he knew where to find her.

* * * * *

The gauze dried Penny’s mouth and irritated her throat. She tried to force the gag out with her tongue, but Reid had tied it too tight. The wound in her thigh burned like a hot iron. She had no idea why he’d cut her, and though his crude suturing had stopped the bleeding, the work of it was almost too painful to be worth it. The thought of him all over on top of her, breathing into her mouth, and touching her, made her skin crawl, and she was terrified that when he came back, he’d take from her what she would never give him freely.

A door slammed and she braced for his return.

“Reid!” An unfamiliar male voice thundered down the hallway. “Max Reid, do you hear me?”

Penny rattled her restraints, all except for the one on the wounded leg, which was too sore to move.

“Help.” The gag muffled her words.

She hadn’t been imagining things. Reid, who she’d once thought to be a pinnacle hunter, had enemies, and they had finally come for him. Doors opened and closed and she could tell from the noises they were getting closer.

“Help me, please.” She tried to chew through the gauze, to speak louder and more clearly, but the fiber was too dense to get through without scissors, and all that came out were muffled, unintelligible pleas.

The infant, who had been quiet for some time, resumed crying.

“It’s coming from over there,” said a deeper voice.

Penny twisted her arm and tried to slip her wrist form the restraints, but the buckles were fastened too tightly. The leather rubbed her skin raw and her elbow
popped
.

“Help. Somebody help me.”

She tried to scream louder than the infant’s crying, but it was too late.

A scuffle erupted in the hall. The men shouted at one another and something crashed. Whoever was looking for Reid had found him.

Tears streamed down Penny’s cheeks. These men were her only hope, and whether they killed or captured Reid, it left her alone, in the basement of an abandoned medical center which terrified her. It was easy to look back on what she’d done wrong. If she starved to death strapped to the table and gagged, she’d had a hand in sealing that fate. She should’ve never checked out the noise alone. She should have been better to Foster. She prayed for the chance to apologize.